Eleven minutes of planning
Marcus is writing the longer Aptis Advanced Writing task: an article for a workplace newsletter arguing that the company should fund staff training. Guidance is 180-220 words in 25 minutes. He spends 11 minutes planning a five-point argument with statistics recalled from memory, then writes fast. At minute 22 he is at 240 words with three of the five points covered. His sentences run long; one relative clause has lost its verb; the final paragraph stops mid-example. He believes more content earns more marks and that the planning time was well spent. Three minutes remain and there is no time to start again.
1. Diagnose the time allocation. What should the planning phase have produced?
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Eleven minutes is roughly 45% of the task spent producing nothing that is assessed. Planning should take three to four minutes and yield:
- a position stated in one sentence;
- three supporting points, each with one piece of evidence;
- a closing line that returns to the reader's interest.
What it should not yield is a five-point structure. Points four and five were never going to fit inside 220 words, so the plan guaranteed an unfinished article. The judgement error is treating the task as a coverage test: the prompt asks for a persuasive argument, and a persuasive argument is three developed points, not five sketched ones. A five-point plan in 220 words produces approximately 44 words per point - assertion without support.
2. At 240 words with three minutes left, what should Marcus do - and what should he not do?
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Priority order:
- Repair the broken clause (about 30 seconds). An incomplete sentence is a visible accuracy error and often makes the surrounding sentence unreadable.
- Close the article. Replace the half-finished example with a one-sentence conclusion that answers the question: fund the training, for these reasons. An article that stops mid-example reads as a failure to complete the task; a short but finished article does not.
- Trim, if there is time. Cut the least supported of the three points rather than compressing all three into vagueness.
What he must not do:
- Start point four. A fourth point introduced and abandoned is worse than three complete ones.
- Rewrite whole sentences for style. There is no time to re-read the result.
He is over the word guidance, but the unfinished ending is the bigger problem; fix structure before length.
3. The task is a workplace newsletter article, not an essay. What does that change, and how would it show in the text?
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An essay argues to a marker; an article argues to colleagues who did not ask to read it. That alters three things:
- Opening. An article needs a reason to keep reading - a concrete workplace situation, not a definition (
Training is important in modern businessfails). - Address. Direct engagement with the reader is appropriate (
you, a question, a shared reference to the team). This is one of the few places where second person is a strength rather than an error. - Evidence. The statistics Marcus recalled are less persuasive to this audience than a claim his colleagues can verify from their own week.
Register stays neutral-to-formal: no slang, no contractions if the house style is formal, but also no academic hedging. Marcus's long sentences work against all of this - an article is read quickly, so short sentences carry the argument better.